


The Free Clinic

by DaisyNinjaGirl



Category: Amazing Spider-Man (2012), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:25:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyNinjaGirl/pseuds/DaisyNinjaGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem with being a superhero with a secret identity is this: sometimes you need someone to patch you up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Free Clinic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/gifts), [boomslangvenom](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=boomslangvenom).



> The idea for this came from a comment that ‘boomslangvenom’ made in response to [this story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/505507): “And I can totally see it. And see the clinics patching him up without asking questions or making him take off the mask; some dive letting him hang out if he's caught in a sudden downpour; old ladies handing him arm warmers, leg warmers, hats, neck warmers (the tube kind that won't flap in his face), socks, and maybe even sweaters (if they can guess his size) they've knit for him in his typical pattern to keep him warm in winter; and I am willing to bet that, if not for the fact that Aunt May would panic, there's always a place for him to crash safely that might not be up to Stark standards, but certainly satisfies Peter.” So here we go!

Jeanette hated working night shift at the clinic.  By day they got quiet people – students who couldn’t afford insurance, immigrants, the unemployed, sometimes a homeless guy with bare feet and a bad smell.  At night, the crazies came out – the alkies and the nutjobs and the criminals.  It eroded the morale, she thought, the people she worked with; night by night she could see them slowly let themselves go, becoming more unshaven, a little bit more rumpled, little blotches of stains accumulating on their clothing.  Night by night, perhaps a little eroding of compassion. 

Jeanette was always a careful dresser: a shirt she’d ironed herself, a skirt of soft plaid wool, a neatly laundered labcoat.  She liked to keep up standards. 

The time she met Spiderman, it was… one of _those_ nights.  The clinic staff had been run off their feet for hours fielding clients who babbled about gas and giant lizards and monsters – Joe and Rafi, their security guards had all they could do to keep the waiting room quiet.  Finally the shift was over and they could close up and she walked back into her surgery for one last check that it was tidy for the day shift.  There was a man on the bed, decked out in scarlet and blue, stinking of blood.

She must have made a sound, because he looked up from where he was dabbing at his leg with swabs.  “No!  No, it’s OK, I’m a good guy.  Promise!”  His face was covered with a red hood, mouthless, the eyes bulbous and dark…

“We have a strict no mask policy in this clinic,” she said briskly.  “No masks, no helmets, no gang affiliations.”

The man’s hands went up to his face.  “I… I can’t.  I’m not in a gang, I _promise_.  Look, I’m not here to cause trouble, I just want to get cleaned up before I go home…”

Jeanette flicked the light switch on.  “Would you roll up your sleeves, please?”

“What?”  His voice was tenor and hesitant.  A boy’s voice.  “Oh.  OK.”  He pulled his gloves off and turned up the cuffs of his sleeves.

“All the way to the elbows,” she said gruffly.  The boy had nice hands, she thought, long fingers, well-muscled – no needle tracks on his wrists.  She watched critically until she could see that his elbows were clean, then nodded gruffly.  “Alright.”

She washed her hands at the sink carefully, snapped latex gloves on, pulled out her shears to cut away fabric from the wound site.  As she worked, she talked, a habit she’d always had – “I’m Dr Winters,” she said.  At his silence, she went on: “this will need a couple of stitches.  You should stay off it for a couple of days.”  A stitch, and an almost hidden flinch at her needle.  “Your shirt, too, please, you’ll need to lift it.”  There were heavy claw marks across the boy’s chest.  “Those are infected.  I’ll give you some antibiotics,” she said as she dressed them. 

He ducked his head.  “Thanks.”

She looked at him again, at the ripped up tights he was wearing, and the grime and the blood and the mouthless hood, and washed her hands again, carefully scrubbing her fingers.  “You have something to wear home, kid?”

“Sure,” he said, “in my ba–”  The boy’s double take as he looked around him was almost comical.  She left the room, came back with a jersey and some pants from the Lost & Found box, put some bills in the pocket for subway fare.

“Here.  Put these on.  You got someone waiting for you at home?”

The boy ducked his head again.  “Yes, ma’am.”

“Then get.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  He leapt into the window and paused, looking back at her.  “Ma’am?”

She scowled disapprovingly at him.  “Kid?”

“Do you know where I could get some eggs around here?”

***

She saw him now and then after that.  Sometimes it would be the news – tv shots from a helicopter, or hysterical rants in the Daily Bugle about vigilantism.  Sometimes he’d appear in her clinic again, after hours, usually with a handful of filthy notes to put in the donations box, smelling of mud and sewage and sweat.  One time, after she checked out his knee, he stopped her and opened up his backpack, pulled out sweaters and scarves and hats – red and blue with black staring spiders knitted into them.  “I… there’s a lady on the street who gives these to me.  I can’t take them home, my aunt wouldn’t understand.”  She put them into the lost property box and gave them out to clients.   And wrapped one of the scarves around his neck before he swung out the window.

“It’s cold out,” she said.

On Christmas Eve, he was in her window when she came in, one last check to make sure the room was tidy before the next shift.  There were streamers around the walls, and the taste of eggnog on her lips, and she sighed, because it was Christmas Eve and here was her young superhero, getting himself beat up again.  He put up his hands.  “No, no!  It’s fine!  I wanted to leave this for you,” he said, one careful hand putting a package on the bed.  “But I gotta know, Doctor Winters, do you have someone waiting at home for you?”

She picked up the package, garish in red and blue and black.  “No, son.”  He was a good young man, she thought, good manners, kind.  If she’d ever had time to have a kid, she thought that maybe she would have liked to have had one like him…

“Then I’ll walk you home.  But you have to put this on first – it’s cold out.”

‘This’ was a long scarf, soft and blue and grey, and light as the down on a kitten’s belly.  She wrapped it around her neck, feeling the nap of the wool brush against her fingers.  “You get home,” she growled.  “Your aunt will be worrying.”

But as she walked through the night streets, she could hear the soft shirrush of webs floating through the air.  At her apartment building, she looked up and saw the black staring goggles glinting before he threw himself into the air again.

***

One time, she didn’t see Spiderman. 

It was late in the afternoon and she was hurrying to her shift, when a young man in the crowd walked up to her and took her elbow.  As she flinched and fumbled for her pepper spray he said quickly: “Please – I need a doctor” and his voice was so intent that she followed him into the alley without even wondering how the boy had known she was a doctor.

The man was down with a sucking stab wound, what she guessed was a messed up mugging.  She put the boy to work, making him hold pressure on the wound site while she called for an ambulance.  He had good hands, she thought, long fingers and well-muscled, clean fingernails, which she liked to see on people.  She stopped talking for a moment, had to let the dispatch operator ask her where she was, then gruffly hung up the call and got back to her job.

When they were done and the man was loaded onto a stretcher, she nodded at the boy.  “You did good, kid.”  She held out her hand, still bloody from her work.  “I’m Jeanette Winters,” she said.

He smiled, shy and evasive, and took her hand.  “Peter Parker.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Peter Parker.”  She hesitated, then pointed out of the alley.  “There’s a market where you can get eggs about a block that way.”

He ducked his head and grinned, his eyes bright, his mouth wide and friendly.  “I’ll remember that.  Thanks.”


End file.
